Here & There – 2017 Top Ten Best Places to Live

Collaborating with world-renowned urbanist Richard Florida, Livability ranked more than 2,000 cities with populations between 20,000 and 350,000 to come up with their 2017 Best Places to Live.

Cities are evaluated based on more than 40 data points including home values, taxes and cost of living, as well as quality of life criteria like air quality and commutes, and earn their rankings based on how they compare to each other.

Even though Decatur didn’t make the list, we were curious to find out how our city stacked up to the “Best.” You’ll be surprised at the results. On the table below, we took the average of the Top Ten cities to compare Decatur’s data. Decatur comes out on top in almost every category, scoring highest in living well for less, which is based on the cost of living index, median home prices and free or affordable cultural arts offerings. Decatur also has the lowest property taxes and best air quality by a huge margin over any of the Top Ten.